Saroo Brierley, whose memoir, A Long Way Home, has inspired the film Lion, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, feels that the time is just right to sit back, relax and see what happens on the big Oscar night. “We have six nominations and if we get one, we’ll be happy. And then just party hard,” said the Indian-born-Australian businessman on his trip to Calcutta this month. 

At age five, Saroo accidentally boarded a train at Khandwa, in Madhya Pradesh, and ended up wandering the streets of Calcutta. Subsequently, he was put in an orphanage and adopted by an Australian couple in 1987. Much later, he embarked on a Google Earth-aided mission to find his birth mother. Ever since, Saroo has been to India 15 times. “I have been to India 15 times between 2012 and 2017, and every time I come to Calcutta. I have to do that. I come here to see Saroj Sood and how she is doing (the 84-year-old Sood is the founder honorary secretary of The Indian Society For Sponsorship and Adoption, who received him in 1987),” said Saroo. 

A t2 chat... 

What will you wear to the Oscars?

I have got a tuxedo. 

How about sporting Indianwear?!

I don’t know. I think that’s a really cool idea. I’ll stand out (smiles). 

What are your plans for the Oscar evening?

I’ll just take it easy and have fun, just rejoice the fruits of your labour. It’s not about going out and meeting all these people. It’s just sitting there and reflecting back about what has happened and where you are coming from and where you got to. At the end of the day, that’s what it is for me. I’m fairly sort of a laid-back and optimistic guy full of effervescence and vitality. 

Where were you when you got the news of the Oscar nominations? 

I didn’t know whether to stay awake or not. I went to sleep and then I woke up an hour later. And then I went back to sleep again. Woke up. It was 2 o’clock and I looked at my phone and saw this message that said that Lion has six Oscar nominations. I was like, wow, really! I turned the phone off, went back to sleep, woke up like 10 minutes later, took another look at the message and that’s when it sunk in. Getting the Oscar would be another level of excitement. 

What goes through your mind when you land in Calcutta?

Initially I was quite apprehensive of coming here. I have been here 15 times. I am sort of used to it now. When I first started coming to Calcutta, it brought back a lot of memories... the hardships I went through, the situations I was placed in, and the possibilities of those situations becoming so hostile. I almost drowned in the Hooghly river, which is something really crazy. If there is something about Calcutta that scares me, it’s that. 

I have just got used to coming here, and concentrating on Saroj Sood and the adoption home, and giving something back. If it was not for Saroj Sood who took me out of the Liluah Home, then it would have been a different story. I would have been somewhere else. She is the catalyst for me beginning a new life.  

What’s the impression of the city that you get now?

It’s lot more built up and has become slightly Westernised in areas. When you type in Calcutta (on the Internet) certain hotels and events come up… I see Calcutta as a place where I have a lot of memories… a lot of fond memories of coming back here and helping the children. I have scary memories too.... It is a great place to come. The buildings, the Hooghly river, the Howrah train station, Saroj Sood’s office on Kyd Street... I always visit those places. It’s a reminder of what happened to you and where you actually landed. It’s good to refresh your memories and go back to the places. I have been in Australia for 29 years... but it’s always great coming back to India. This is where my heritage is. 

What are you working on now?

I am working on the prequel to A Long Way Home. Writing books isn’t easy. It takes a long time. Hopefully, we’ll have that out by this time next year. The prequel will have nothing to do with me. It’ll be about my two mothers — biological and adoptive — and Saroj and how they went through hardships to be where they are. There will be things in the book relating to my adoptive mother (Sue) and her mother and father. 

What did it feel like to see your story unfold on screen for the first time?

I saw Lion for the first time in Sydney last year. I thought I’d be quite desensitised but I couldn’t help myself but be pulled back into the times I had gone through, the situations from being in Khandwa to getting on the train to going through the hardships in Calcutta. I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. I was clutching on to my seat so hard, because physically and mentally it moves you. I thought I was thick-skinned, thicker than an elephant’s hide. The film has this amazing power of penetrating you regardless of who you are. It’s quite phenomenal for a film to 
do that. 

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